As the team makes it final preparations for their departure to Kigali Joe Chaplin tells us of his preparation for two weeks in Rwanda with Cricket Without Boundaries.
As the county cricket season draws to a close today, we begin our Rwandan adventure. At time of writing it looks like the title will go to Essex but given the way cricket has been this summer, you never know… (and Gloucestershire are promoted to Div 1 – Up the Shire! ed)
My CWB story so far goes hand in hand with a magical cricketing summer. Cast your mind back to deepest February. England were 2-0 down in a test series in the West Indies and Keaton Jennings was opening the batting. I applied to join this year’s CWB projects and after a chat with Lee Booth (Head of Delivery) and a phone interview, I was accepted on to the Rwanda project. We haven’t seen Jennings in an England shirt since, sorry Keaton! England won that match and went into an extremely high scoring one day series. Whilst this was exciting for crowd catch fans, it didn’t bode too well for what I’d decided to do to fundraise; with scores of 360 vs 360 and a Jos Buttler inspired England racking up 418 in the 4th game.
In my ‘interview’, I’d committed to a fundraising challenge of running every run scored (22 yards = 20.12m per run) during the upcoming summer’s World Cup – a great way (I thought at the time) to commemorate what would hopefully be a great tournament!
Pre-project, CWB are really good at keeping you updated on progress toward your trip. Project Lead Thom sent time appropriate emails and by the end of March, our flights were booked and we had the all important A-Z of Rwanda at our disposal. As we moved in to April, I was lucky enough to meet up with Sara Begg to find out more about the charity and what a project looks like. Sara helped me put on a fundraising cake sale on the second day of the World Cup where we managed to raise over £270 toward my £750 fundraising target, so a massive shout out to her!
Spring crept into something approaching summer, Villa got promoted (as did Sheffield United – #UTB – ed) and everything was right with the world. Then the World Cup began with a relatively routine England win over South Africa and that Ben Stokes catch! The next morning, I put on my running shoes and went out to run the 10.42km from the day before. Meanwhile, Thom was emailing confirming where we‘d be coaching (Musanze, Gitarama and Kigali) and also giving options for a touristy day off on our middle Sunday in Rwanda, all very exciting – we’re going to a tea plantation in Kinihira – looking forward to it!
As June progressed, England did their level best to throw away the opportunity of a lifetime. Defeats against Pakistan (13.72km), Sri Lanka (8.94km) and Australia (10.18km) left us on the brink of missing out on the semi finals in a format designed to ensure we couldn’t not qualify! Joe Root, Kane Williamson, Shakib Al Hasan and Rohit Sharma were busy racking up the distance for me, with 11 centuries between them; Thom was busy sorting out accommodation and by the third week of July we had our hotels confirmed.
Jonny Bairstow came to the party and, with twin centuries in crunch games against India and New Zealand, ensured England would reach the semi finals. We absolutely marmalised Australia at Edgbaston to set up the men’s first World Cup final in 27 years. No cricket fan will forget the 14th of July 2019. At the halfway point, needing 242 to win, England looked in the box seat – a 4.87km I would have been delighted to run. It nearly didn’t happen. Colin de Grandhomme lived up to his surname with a brilliant spell of 1/25 off his 10 overs and completely stifled us. Then Ben Stokes did Ben Stokes things. He’d nearly seen us over the line in the aforementioned defeats to Australia and Sri Lanka and wasn’t going to be left high and dry for a third time. Trent Boult caught him out but stepped on to the boundary foam (6 runs)… he dived to make his ground to beat a Martin Guptill throw but the ball deflected off his bat to the boundary (6 runs… unless you’re Simon Taufel) and all of a sudden, we needed 2 off 1 ball to win the World Cup. In came Boult… Stokes punted it down the ground… they ran… Mark Wood was coming back for the second but Boult ran him out. We were heading to a Super Over with the score tied. Ian Smith couldn’t believe it in the commentary box. I couldn’t believe it in my front room, this meant further to run for my challenge! This paragraph (and entire piece) has gone on far too long so I’ll be brief and say we won. Despite it being another tie after the super over. Ahh cricket, never change. Wonderful scenes at Lord’s just two years after the women had won the World Cup on the same ground- cricket had come home again. By the barest of margins.
By this point, I’d run 25/48 matches and 4 of those had been rained off wash outs. I still had a lot of running to do. So, on the morning of my wedding (29th July), I went out and ran 5km. On my honeymoon in the Seychelles, I managed to cobble together 20km. Slowly but surely, I was approaching my target – the World Cup had racked up 451.62km for me to do. CWB kept us updated throughout August and the training weekend was fast approaching.
Before that came Headingley. I was there on Day 2. Jofra Archer had taken 6 wickets in gloomy conditions the previous day to bowl the Aussies out for 179 and come 11am the sun was shining ready for a big day of England batting. We were 1-0 down in the series and with Steve Smith missing for this game, this was our chance to get back in the Ashes. We were bowled out for 67 inside a session and a half. Great. Two days later, I watched in my living room as Ben Stokes did more Ben Stokes stuff. Possibly the greatest ever test match innings, he went from being 2 not out off about 70 balls to bludgeoning the ball to all parts once we were 9 wickets down and Jack Leach was there to keep him company. Nathan Lyon fumbled a run out (nice Gary) and Tim Paine made one of the worst DRS reviews I’ve ever seen. Eventually, with the scores level, Ben cut away a four and Headingley went wild. A gargantuan effort had kept us in the Ashes and, swept up in the euphoria, I announced that I’d add the summer test matches to my running challenge.
I completed the World Cup section of the challenge at the Wolverhampton half marathon on the 1st of September. Two weekends later, I was back in the Midlands for the CWB training weekend in Coventry. This was an amazing two days, especially great for new volunteers as the three teams (Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda) all learned how they’d be coaching once they arrived in country. It was great to meet the team and I went home even more excited for the project than I had been. England won the final test match as I was on the train home and despite not being able to regain the Ashes, a wonderful international summer had drawn to a close with a victory.
With time ticking away, I had to keep running though and I just about finished the challenge last Saturday (T20 Blast Finals Day) by running my 50th Parkrun (there’s one for the running geeks). To finish the challenge, I donned pads, gloves and a helmet, picked up my bat and headed out for my last 5km of the summer.
28,432 runs had been scored since the 30th of May. I ran 572.14km – thanks to everybody that has donated to CWB because of this, I couldn’t have done it without your support!
Now I really need to finish packing, sorry this was so long, as you can probably tell from the challenge, I tend to get a bit carried away. Will write again from Rwanda, thanks for reading!
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